fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2196 ]

[ SECRET POST #2196 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2196 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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05. http://i.imgur.com/nQ7tw.png

I like your list. Do you have fics?

DA

And I'd like to ask the OP for art (that isn't overly sexualized).
Especially female Gandalf and Faramir intrigue me.

I like a universe in which both Denethor and Faramir are female. That adds an extra layer of mind-fuck that just enhances the weirdness :D

Sorry, not I don't. I also don't have art, I kinda just sit on this headcanon.

Sorry, no I don't. I also don't have art, I kinda just sit on this headcanon.

In changing characters from male to female, do you also change the way they'd be perceived by the other characters, how their roles in the story would change because of it, and how that change might affect the overall story?

Otherwise, I can't really see the point of it. Especially in these fandoms you've given as examples, where it's pretty damn clear that women need to know their place.

Changing their gender would likely change everything about and around the characters, which I've always thought was meant to be the point. Or are you just changing the pronouns in the name of being progressive? Not that it matters much, but I find genderswap that does only that to be tiresome and a bit pointless.

Especially in these fandoms you've given as examples, where it's pretty damn clear that women need to know their place.
Really now? There are very few of them, no arguing about that, but them needing to know their place?

Yeah, try telling that to Galadriel.

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it makes it easier to get them laid, for one.

Makes perfect sense to me, especially in canons with very few female characters.

i do this, especially with protagonists

more kickass female protags please

I love genderswap, so long as it isn't just a matter of changing the pronouns and keeping everything else the same. Most of the societies in LOTRverse are so stiffly patriarchal, it'd be interesting to explore the difficulties and tensions presented if one of them was female rather than male. Maybe not Legolas -- elves seem to command such intrinsic respect from other races that it wouldn't be that interesting.

But definitely someone like Pippin, who was barely allowed to join the group because of his age. Having him be both young and female would present quite a few hurdles to overcome to find acceptance and respect.

If it's just women for the sake of women -- nah. I don't relate or like a character more because of his or her gender, so for me it would be pointless.

Edited 2013-01-06 22:32 (UTC)

Not the OP, but I genderswap men to women for the sake of women and I really hate that I always have to explain myself when people comment negatively about that on my artworks or fanfics.
I'm fed up with this entire "if it's swapped from man to woman she needs to face sexism and misogyny or else it wouldn't make sense".
That's just like saying that turning hetero chars into homosexual chars is pointless if they're not also facing oppression and homophobia in the new headcanon.

I use genderswap as a form of escapism. I don't need the shit I face every week in my escape fantasies as well (for example, I had to quit my former job because my male coworkers wouldn't stop making crude sex jokes about me, just because I happen to have big boobs and refused to cover them up in layers and layers of cloth in summer. And as cherry on top my boss didn't believe me that I was being sexually harrassed. He thought I was being arrogant for believing I was so hot that every guy wanted to harras me).

I also often turn a male character into a woman to ship her with a canon woman just for the sake of having f/f romance.
Because most of the time my fandoms have only one or two women but a shitload of guys. So I wouldn't need to turn a woman into a guy to have m/m.
And as a gay woman I just can relate better to f/f or m/m. Sorry that not all people are able to identify with the mainstream.

Well, I think we use genderswap for different purposes. I probably wouldn't be interested in the fics that you like best, you wouldn't enjoy the ones I find most interesting. I'm more interested in the social dynamics end, you are more interested in the physical gender end. But it's unlikely that I'd ever comment on one of your fics. When I do come across the kind of genderswap that does nothing for me, I just backarrow out and go about my business.

Edited 2013-01-07 00:24 (UTC)

Sounds like you gender-swap for the same reasons I do. I have a much easier time identifying with a female protagonist, and and would be happier if the shows I liked just had female protagonists, but since they don't...

In fact, I'm far more irritated by fics that change everything about the character when they change their gender. At that point, why not just make up a OC?

yes, this, thank you!

while i'm fine with ~exploration of how a character's world would be different when genderswap, more often than not, i've been kinda digging genderswap for the sake of genderswap and that's about it. like why not take a series mostly with dudes and have one or more of them be women? also i generally don't want to read essays on gender and sexuality all the time in my male-centric narratives (and it's usually not relevant to the source material) so i don't see much of a point in doing that in a genderswap universe where it's not needed or relevant.

For me (and this is to address the points you're making in this comment and not to explain/clarify Velvet Mace, since she does a good job doing that for herself):

I wouldn't say that facing sexism and misogyny is a necessary quality of genderswap for me, but keeping the character in-character in terms of their personality while exploring whatever ways their personality might change if they are a woman: yeah, I like that best. An easy example would be if you are genderswapping a misogynistic character into someone who was a woman from birth. They might have some internal misogyny anyway, for sure, but I think it would be different and figuring out HOW it would be different while paying respect to the character's intrinsic personality is the what I like best about this sort of fic.

Even in a non misogynistic society, I feel that personality would change in some ways-- sometimes subtle, sometimes not at all subtle, but also sometimes not at all. It depends on the core personality of the character in question. I don't like the sort of fics where "everything is exactly the same" if by that it means that no thought has been given to how the character themselves would change. I mean, sometimes their opportunities or choices in life would just be different, you know?

A good example from one of my own fandoms: my favorite character is a boy from Ookiku Furikabutte, a Japanese anime about baseball (see icon). He is a pitcher, and really arrogant about it too. If I wanted to make him a girl in his own society, I could still have him playing baseball (well, softball) and keep a lot of things about him the same. But he's the kind of person who would shamelessly use feminine wiles if he had them... he conforms to accepted gender roles more because that's just easier and that's what he prefers, not because of any kind of oppression. Even postulating a kind of idealized Japan without the sort of systemic misogyny it actually has irl, I still think he'd be different as a girl. He'd be a flirt instead of a blushing innocent. He'd be less excitable and more down to earth. He'd be less sweet but more kind. There are just all sorts of small tweaks that I feel would be necessary to make him believable as himself while also making him into a girl, and it all comes down to making his personality work if he were born a woman.

I hope that makes sense? I love my escapism too but for me, an intrinsic part of what makes the escapism fun is my underlying love for the characters. They still have to feel real to me, and paying no attention whatsoever to how something as significant as being born a different gender would change them seems just uninteresting to me. I look at it as a form of AU: if I put Haruna into a world where magic was real and baseball didn't exist, of course that would change some things about him! It would be a lot smaller if I changed things for him as a woman, but it's just as fun to explore how his whole sense of himself would have shaped itself differently.

OP here. I do both. Mostly though I genderswap because I like it; I do the same with racebending.
Sometimes I headcanon some intrinsic racism/sexism in, but mostly I let it alone because this is my headcanon and I do what I want.

I shouldn't need to have a reason for making Faramir a lady other than I want Faramir to be a lady.

Me too. I don't talk about it much, since genderswap seems to get a bad rap in most fandoms, but, yeah, I'm totally right there with you. Dean Winchester, Spock, Stiles, etc etc etc will always be women to me, haha.

is there really a lot of negative feeling towards the genderswap trope? i'm genuinely curious (because mostly i've seen it handled well and get good response from what i've seen so i'm wondering if it might just be an attitude that's in some fandom and not others)

I think it depends on the fandom, and then it faces backlash due to sexism and shipping wars.

Like, I've heard people in Teen Wolf fandom throw a fit at a fem!Stiles because it takes away the slash pairing of Sterek; some people remedy this with genderswapping Derek as well so that it becomes femslash.

However, I personally feel that while definitely some people genderswap due to homophobia, I think a lot more people do it simply because there aren't that many well written female characters out there, so we do it ourselves. Because thinking about it, I rarely ever see people genderswap female characters to male. Probably because there's already an abundance of male characters.

I know I've seen people be weirded out by it or say it's gross, but I've only really looked at genderswap stuff in the One Piece fandom, and most people seem pretty okay with it there. Possibly because there's actually a character in the manga/anime who can actually give people an instant sex change.

I never knew how much I wanted genderswapped Legolas, Faramir and Gandalf until now.

Speaking of Tolkien, I've genderswapped Fingon in my headcanon forever now and it's only seeing this secret that's made me aware this is even a thing with me. Huh.

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